To Have Nothing
by Feimi
Summary: What does it feel like to have nothing? To not have a greater purpose? (Warning: Eventual ZADR and also RAPR)
1. Default Chapter

A/N: I couldn't stay away long. :) Here's my next story, and I warn you right now, this story is going to contain slash. Yes, slash! I'm going to rate it PG-13 for now, but I may up the rating if I need to. This is going to both be ZADR and RAPR, so blah blah blah.. yadda ya.. get on with the damned story!

Disclaimer thing: I don't own Invader Zim, I'm not making any money.. don't sue me, dammit.

**Chapter 1 - An Interesting Development**

* * *

"NO!" She cried, struggling against her captors, kicking and fighting and emitting horrible screeches as they dragged her away. "You can't do this to me! The Armada will come for me, they'll destroy you all if you do not release me immediately! You'll all pay for this! You'll all die horrifying, painful deaths!" Invader Tenn shouted at the Meekrobians that held her. She couldn't believe it.. her mission, failed.  
  
"Oh shut up!" The Meekrobian Guard Captain hissed at her, delivering a swift, hard kick to her ribcage, causing her to cry out in pain and clutch at her small, frail looking body. Tenn's bones and organs would have been screaming with her, if they had had voice boxes. The Guard Captain turned and stared at the camera that was recording their capture of the Invader Tenn. "I want this sent to the Council, and permission asked to have it broadcasted to every single planet in range of our satellites," He ordered, his body shaking, perhaps with rage?  
  
"Behold!" He suddenly shouted after his brief pause. "This message is to everyone, but mostly to the leaders of the incredibly stupid race who sent this.. _pathetic_ alien menace to, and I quote, 'Rain doom down upon this filthy planet of Meekrob.'" He smirked, a smug look upon his face. "We have your.. invader, and she is going to be executed. There is no hope for her escape, and we're going to send her back to you in little peices, along with her completely useless robotic death machines... after we find out who she's working for, of course." The camera panned down to the floor, focusing on Tenn's completely destroyed SIR unit. The remains of other SIR units could also be seen littering the space where they had successfully captured Tenn.  
  
Tenn groaned, looking up at the people that she thought she had been destined to conquer. She tried her best to defy them still, but she was quite small... not as small as some of the other Invaders from Irk, but still hopelessly small. The Captain grapped her antennae in one of his huge hands and pulled her forward to face the camera. She yelped in pain again, her red eyes watering slightly. "Her clock is ticking." He whispered as he smiled sadistically and threw her back into the group of guards. She fought them again, kicking and screaming and trying to break free so that she could run, but there were too many of them. She was restrained and thrown roughly into a holding cell. She hit the side of it and sunk to the floor, her eyes closed and her body went limp as darkness surrounded her.

* * *

"Did you see that? Did you see that?!" Red fumed as he paced, or rather.. floated, back and forth across the control deck of the Massive. This was an outrage! One of their superior Invaders captured? To be executed? And the Meekrobian filth had called them stupid! Him? Stupid? Never! The very idea... to be insulted on Intergalactic television... ohh, they were playing dirty now, they certainly were..  
  
"Yes, Red, I heard it!" Purple interrupted Red's inner ravings. He knew very well that if there was one thing that Red couldn't handle, it was a direct insult. Red's antennae twitched in impatience and rage as he stopped his constant floating to stare at his counterpart. "Perhaps we could negotiate with Meekrob to get Tenn back?" Purple suggested helpfully after taking a deep breath.   
  
At this, Red laughed out loud. He didn't want to negotiate, not with the Meekrobians, especially. Tenn was one of their best, he wouldn't stand to see her treated with such disrespect. After all, they were going to entrust her with the Megadoomer.. well, before that damned Zim had gotten ahold of it by some stupid shipping mistake. He looked over at Purple, and Purple was giving him an oddly stern look. "What?" He asked, sounding annoyed.  
  
"I know what you're thinking, Red," Purple started, floating over to him and gently resting a hand on the armor plate that was covering Red's shoulder. His co-ruler sighed loudly and waved his hand away. "You want to just go down there and attack them, right?" Purple was smiling slightly. In all the years they had known each other, nobody knew Red better. The Irken nodded slowly, blinking his large crimson eyes. Purple shook his head.   
  
"The Meekrobians are one of the most advanced races in the Galaxy, _almost_ as advanced as we are," he started to explain.  
  
"I know that!" Red interrupted him impatiently. "But we can't just leave Tenn there, Purple! Think of the consequences, not only are we losing an Invader, but she's not going to be able to acess her Self-Destruct mechanism. Before they kill her, they're going to try to get anything they can out of her. That's going to be a disaster! Who knows what they might do to her, or what she might tell them?" One of his eyes was twitching.   
  
"Red, she's gone through the same training that we did, extensively," Purple was staring at him intently. "She knows what torture is like! Each Invader is trained to never crack, no matter what's done to them, you know that. Would you crack and spill everything if you were captured and tortured?" Purple said softly.   
  
Red thought about that for a moment.. Purple looked uneasy from Red's hesitation. "If it hurt enough," Red said slowly. Purple's jaw dropped. "What?" He asked again, crossing his arms. "You were there, Purple! I wasn't good at that part of training..." Purple was shaking his head slowly.  
  
"Why do I feel as if we're doomed?"

* * *

Dib stared at his laptop's screen in disbelief. He'd been trying to monitor his arch enemy's house from the roof of his own when another transmission had started to interfere with the very bad signal. It was fuzzy, but as it started to clear he saw a small, green creature being held by some other, larger creatures, they were speaking a language he didn't recognize. The screen blackened, then came back to show Zim being held captive by what looked like a group of a different type of aliens. No.. this wasn't Zim.. but it looked very much like him, only more feminine.. and she was making such horrible noises as she protested against her captors. What was this?  
  
The boy gasped loudly as he had a sudden realization of what he was seeing. She was just like Zim, and Invader.. and she had been captured. But.. why was he getting this transmission? He wondered vaguely if Zim was seeing it too, back in his base. Dib smiled slightly. Perhaps this Invader had been just as pathetic as Zim, and maybe that's why she had been captured. Was Zim's whole race like this? If so, then maybe Earth had nothing to worry about after all..   
  
He tried to find a way to record the transmission, he could save it for future viewing, or send it to Mysterious Mysteries or something.. but he couldn't. By the time he found a way to save the thing, it was over. He groaned loudly in frustration, resisting the urge to kick something. It was a pretty expensive laptop, after all. He might be able to ask Zim about it the next day at school... or rather bother Zim so much that the alien would just tell him in an effort to get him to go away, or make an attempt on his life. Usually, he would have expected the latter, but he never knew with Zim.   
  
All the stupid plans.. the insults that made no sense whatsoever.. he didn't know what this meant or what Zim would do. He wondered vaguely if the Invader would be worried by what he had witnessed.  
  
"Tomorrow," he said aloud, then packed up his equipment and headed to the side of the roof, sliding down the rainspout to land softly in the grass.


	2. Boring Algebra and Zim's Plan

A/N: As some of you can tell, this is going off of the storyline they were going to end the series with, because I liked it. I am going to do things differently, due to the whole ZaDR thingy.. so, yeah. I hope that you like this chapter. Sorry it took too long, I'm finally moving and stuff has gotten pretty damned stressful.

* * *

**_Chapter 2 - Boring Algebra and Zim's Plan_**  
  
"Heyyyy! What happened to ma show?!" GIR asked as he pressed the buttons on the remote. "The same thing's on every channel." He let out a sort of squeal of frustration as he flipped through the channels. Zim looked up from a little viewscreen on which he had been plotting out his next devious plan to rid himself of that Dib.  
  
"GIR, your incessant noises are disrupting my amazing thinking processes!" GIR grunted in response. "What's wrong now?"  
  
"I wanna watch the comedy shows!" GIR sort of growled, now pounding more buttons on the remote. "This is _boooring_."  
  
"GIR, stop that, you're going to break the-" The Irken froze as the voices coming from the tv caught his attention. "Wha?"  
  
There was Tenn, in all of her Irken glory, being tossed about like a ragdoll by the Meekrobians, thrown into one of their containment cells.. He saw her slip to the ground unconcious.  
  
"WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!"  
  
"The same thing's on every channel!!!" GIR continued to squeal.  
  
"Tenn's been captured.... but why are we seeing it?" Zim asked himself. "Normally no one would have any knowledge of this unless they specifically asked to view the other Invaders, or heard news of it from Irken transmissions.. and we haven't.." He trailed off, staring at GIR. "Have you been messing with the telescope?!" He demanded, accusingly.  
  
"Noooo." GIR said sweetly. "I didn't touch your telioscopey-thingy, master."  
  
"Hmmm... " Zim placed his fingers under his chin, thinking. "This is worrying me for some reason. Ordinarily, I wouldn't care very much if a fellow Invader was captured, we're meant to fend for ourselves.. but something isn't right.. something _'smells fishy'_ here."  
  
"Fish?! Where? Is it tunaaaa?!" GIR asked excitedly.  
  
Ignoring the deranged, tuna-loving robot, Zim headed down below, into his labs to see if there was anything more that he could find out about Tenn and her capture.  
  
The Irken Network was vast, almost as vast as the sytems of planets the Irkens ruled with their iron fists. He searched through the data that Tenn had submitted on Meekrob, but found nothing in particular on her capture.. no details, nothing.. except for a recording of the video feed that he had witnessed minutes ago. He thought about contacting the Tallests, but...  
  
"They would probably tell me to mind my own business or something, to focus on my own mission," he muttered faintly. He could envision it now.  
  
'Why are you so concerned, Zim?' Tallest Purple asked him, a figment of his imagination.Tallest Red sighed in annoyance. They both seemed a little irritated whenever he would call.  
  
'Oh, so you've conquered Earth and plan to take over Tenn's mission, have you?" Red questioned. Zim started to sweat a little under their gaze. He shook his head head suddenly, and out went the thoughts of his leaders.  
  
"I'm sure everything will turn out just fine..." He said, his voice sounding hollow. He was getting an uneasy feeling in the depths of his organs. He sighed softly and decided to go back to his evil, Dib-destroying plans, which involved a dodgeball filled with rocks, a rubber chicken, and one of the skool fire-extinguishers.

* * *

The skool bell rang, signaling the start of another horrible day of learning absolutely nothing important whatsoever. Zim took his seat in silence, staring straight ahead at the chalkboard. Slowly, his fellow classmates filed into the room, muttering about various idiocies and adventures they had had the pleasure of undertaking the previous afternoon.  
  
Zim didn't even glance over at the bespectacled boy that he loathed so much when he walked in, but he could feel those amber eyes boring into him, as if the boy had _lazer vision_! One of his purple contact-covered eyes twitched slightly. Dib smirked and took his seat.  
  
Silently he wondered when he would interrogate Zim about that transmission. He still wondered if the alien had even seen it. He felt a sort of pride deep within him, that one of these monsters had been caught, stopped, brought to justice. Even if he hadn't caught Zim yet, one day he would, and he would get to feel proud of himself, rather than another alien race that he would probably never meet. He snickered softly at the thought of this, and even though the classroom was still noisy and nobody was really paying attention to him, Zim turned his head slightly, looking alarmed at first, then his widened eyes narrowed into the glare that he reserved just for Dib.  
  
'What is he planning?' Zim asked himself quietly. Hearing the Dib snicker couldn't be good. There was nothing funny in the room, unless Dib had seen his own reflection or something... 'That horrible stinkbeast..' Dib just smiled back at him. It was more of a smirk, actually. The truimphant kind, which Zim hated on any face but his own.  
  
"Take your seats, children," Ms. Bitters ordered coldly. Reluctantly, those who remained standing and gabbing with friends groaned and sat down. She called roll, but took a longer time than usual, as if she wanted to take up as much time as she could... maybe to make the day seem shorter? When she called Zim's name, he stood up and gave her a half-hearted salute. Perhaps she would teach something useful today... Dib rolled his eyes at the alien and made a small snorting sound. The alien sat back down quickly, not looking at the Dib.  
  
When she was finished, Ms. Bitters sighed. "Today, class, I _somewhat_ regret to inform you all that I have not prepared a lecture with which to bore you all and make you miserable." A cheer came from somewhere in the back of the room. "However," she started again after a brief pause, "Today I will be assigning you bookwork, until I can prepare the daily lecture." A smirk was on her face now, as the previous cheer now changed to a collective groan from the entire class, minus Zim, who didn't really care.  
  
She slipped around the room, handing out Highskool Algebra books. Zim just stared at the cover of the book. One of the girls a few rows back raised her hand.  
  
"But Ms. Bitters," she said, attitude evident in her tone, "We haven't studied this, we're only in Elementary Skool, not High Skool!"  
  
"Silence," Ms. Bitters ordered, glaring at the whining child. "You are all assigned to complete all of the problems from pages one to one hundred forty-seven." The whole class was wide-eyed. "It will prepare you all for your futures, when you are forced to start doing _real_ work in the horrible, nightmarish corporate system that we have on this unfortunate planet." Another collective groan resonated through the room. Zim shook his green head and opened his book. He flipped through the pages and almost laughed.  
  
Most of the pages that they were assigned contained an explanation of how to solve the actual formulas. If the human children were groaning over something as simple as this.. Zim laughed out loud at the thought of their idiocy. As long as they could read and comprehend, they could solve High Skool problems. Dib stared over at him. Dib wasn't worried about the problems, he was a genius after all, he just hated 'busy work'.  
  
"Is there something that you find amusing, Zim?" Ms. Bitters asked him quietly. Zim's head snapped up from the book, his disguised Irken eyes staring at her. He almost hadn't heard her question.  
  
"Er.. um... No, Ms. Bitters," He said, to the relief of the entire class. Knowing their teacher, she just may have assigned them even more work, just to inflict extra misery-- I mean, to give them extra preperation for their hideously doomed lives.

* * *

A few hours later, minutes away from lunch, Zim set down his pencil, his busy work complete. It was quite possibly one of the most boring things he could have ever imagined having to do on Earth, and it seemed to be a good torture method. He smirked to himself as he stared straight ahead again, keeping that thought in mind for the future.  
  
Dib finished soon after him, and spent most of his remaining time either staring at his green classmate or thinking of how he would confront him later. Ms. Bitters was busy on her computer. 'Probably surfing the internet or something,' the boy thought as he glanced at her. Zim turned to stare out the window. The rest of the class wasn't faring too well.. Groans were still heard from the rows behind them occasionally, and one kid complained about his brain hurting. A few of them decided to ignore the assignment and sleep. Ms. Bitters didn't really care, since this was fairly normal anyway.  
  
The bell rang for lunch, instantly waking the sleeping children and snapping the others out of their miserable, drooling trance. They made their way out of the room quickly, Zim and Dib being among the last of them in order to avoid the stampede. They stared at each other in the hallway. "Zim," Dib said, his voice sounding as if it had traces of venom in it as he narrowed his eyes at the Invader in his normal Dib-like way.  
  
"Dib-monkey?" Zim answered in a sarcastically sweet tone, an evil looking smile on his face.  
  
"I want to know about.. that girl," Dib said slowly, unsure of how to ask the alien about one of his capture comrades. Zim looked puzzled for a moment, as if he had no clue what Dib was talking about.  
  
"What girl? I know not of this _girl_ that you speak of, human." It was true, he was indeed wondering what the Dib was talking about, this was no act. The transmission didn't even cross his mind until-  
  
"The one that looked like you! The.. female.. Irken-thing," Dib tried to clarify. Zim's eyes went wide, and Dib smiled. So Zim _had_ seen the transmission, just as he suspected.  
  
Instantly the memory of Tenn's capture flooded through the Invader's mind. How did the human know about that? He had certainly underestimated... no.. Zim smirked back, deciding to play dumb.  
  
"You mean Tak?"  
  
"NO!" Dib said loudly, starting to become frustrated.  
  
"What female Irken?" Zim demanded, trying to sound irritated despite his amusement. He had so much fun infuriating the Dib.  
  
"The horrible alien that was captured! I know you know about it, Zim! I want to know why I recieved that transmission. Who was she? Is she an Invader like you? Tell me! I couldn't understand the language that they were speaking!" Some students that were filing down the hallway gave the two of them odd looks. One of them muttered that Dib was crazy, and pointed. Zim looked serious, staring at the boy now with a grave look on his face.  
  
"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about," Zim lied, very pitifully, in fact. With this said, he proudly marched down the hallway, making his way to the cafeteria.

* * *

"Ohh, delicious. Mayonnaise and Corn, again!" Zim announced loudly. The people in the cafeteria stared at him. He went to sit down by himself at a table. "Yes! STARE AT MY AMAZING GREATNESS!" He bellowed at the people that continued to look at him strangely. After that, they looked away, and Zim huffed in annoyance. The Dib appeared across the table from him, the only person who continued to stare at him. "Ahh, so you come to stare at my amazingness, yes?" Zim said flatly, busying himself with a spoonful of mayonnaise-covered corn.  
  
"I'm going to continue to bother you about her, until you tell me something," Dib said, ignoring the question. Zim smiled.  
  
"Then you're going to have to bother me for the rest of your pitiful life, Dib-human, because I will not be telling you anything.' The alien glanced around the room, then back at Dib.  
  
"That doesn't sound like a bad idea," Dib smirked, ignoring his sickening food and propping his head up on one of his hands, simply staring at Zim. Zim stared right back at the human, and their eyes bore unblinkingly into each other for a long time.  
  
"Just hurry up and kiss each other already," a voice said sarcastically from next to Dib. The staring contest was ended, and neither of them won as they both turned to look at Gaz, who had taken a seat next to her brother.  
  
"Gaz?" Dib asked, staring at her dumbfoundedly. Zim looked disgusted at the thought of commiting that foul human act with the Dib-beast.  
  
"Who did you think I was, Bigfoot? Darth Vader? One of the Mole People? I came to keep an eye on you."  
  
Zim snickered. The Gaz-human loved to torment her sibling probably as much or more than he did. It almost wasn't fair, ganging up on Dib like that, but life was evilly grand.  
  
"Keep an eye on me?" Dib repeated. "Gaz, this is very important, fate-of-the-world sort of stuff. You don't need to follow me around."  
  
"Your fate-of-the-world work always irritates me... all the better reason for me to put a stop to it."  
  
Dib stared at his sister in disbelief. He wasn't going to get anywhere at this rate.

* * *

Eventually lunch ended, they went back to class with little event, and then after that it was time for recess. Dib had another opportunity to get information out of Zim, he couldn't waste it, not now. Walking down the hall, he saw no signs of his nemesis. He had rushed out of the classroom as fast as his Irken legs would carry him, that coward. Dib paused at his locker to empty a few unnecessary items from his bag. When he turned around and started to walk away, he slipped in something on the floor, yelping and landing on his butt and hitting his head against the steel of the lower row of lockers.  
  
"What the hell?" He asked aloud, rubbing the back of his head. He looked at his feet, and raised an eyebrow when he saw that the thing he had slipped on was a rubber chicken that was soaked in the foam that comes out of a fire-extinguisher. "When did that get there?" He picked it up gingerly, examining it. He heard a faint rumbling noise from somewhere above him and looked up towards the top of the lockers, where they jutted out from the wall. Instantly his eyes widened slightly as a dodgeball came plummeting down and bashing right against his forehead. This was no ordinary dodgeball.. this was Zim's dodgeball, so it was naturally lights-out for the Dib.  
  
Zim cackled evilly from his spot around the corner. "Finally! I am rid of this Dib-_thing_ forever! Whooo!" He shouted. The Hall Monitor passed by him, staring. "I didn't do it!" Zim announced and promptly started whistling a random tune as he marched off to recess, trying to look as innocent as possible.  
  
Dib came to a few minutes later, with the Hall Monitor standing over him.  
  
"What happened?" He asked weakly as his eyes came into focus.  
  
"It looks like you had a dodgeball and rubber chicken accident, are you alright?" Dib blinked and stared up, then shook his head as if to clear it.  
  
"No, I mean, yes, I'm perfectly fine." Dib picked himself up off the floor, feeling dizzy. "Thanks," he said monotonely and made his way down the hallway. "Zim," he muttered, filled with loathing once again. Once he got outside, locating Zim wasn't too difficult, seeing as he was greener than the ugly grass that carpeted the skool grounds.  
  
"Zim!" He shouted, making his way over to the Irken Invader. Zim looked up from his spot on a bench under a tree. He had been watching the other stink-children, looking bored.  
  
"Ahh, I see you somehow survived my latest plan to destroy you," he sounded disappointed and slightly annoyed. "Tell me, did I at least damage your brain-meat? Are you stupid now? Oh wait... you were already stupid, weren't you?" He stood up, staring once again into the amber eyes of the Dib.  
  
"That was your latest plan? Hitting me on the head with a dodgeball? You're pathetic, Zim!"  
  
"Correction, it was a rock-filled dodgeball, and it was supposed to cave in your enormous skull. I suppose that your large head bones are also very thick, and that is why it is so large in the first place?" He mocked, smirking at the Dib. The human rolled his eyes.  
  
"Listen, Zim, I want to know about the other Irkens and that transmission. You might as well tell me, I'm going to find out eventually, anyway." He wanted this mystery revealed.  
  
"Oh really?" Zim laughed, smiling malevolently. "I highly doubt that you'll ever find out anything more than you already know, and I'm certainly not going to t---" The Irken froze suddenly, simply blinking. He looked as if he was listening to something distant. His eyes then grew wide, like white and purple saucers. Dib cocked his head to the side.  
  
"Zim?"  
  
Zim muttered something to himself, and without warning, the alien turned away from Dib and sprinted towards the fence, clearing it easily with the help of his spider-legs. It all happened so fast, Dib stared in the direction that Zim had run. It seemed like he had disappeared in the blink of an eye. Some of the children were pointing at the fence and shouting. 


End file.
